When Karen, who oversees the Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health (@KPTotalHealth), invites me to lunch in Rockville, we usually go to a local restaurant.

This time she said we’d be eating at the new, healthier cafeteria at regional headquarters in Rockville, Maryland (no car travel involved 100% #activetransportation). I couldn’t wait to see it.

Why? Because maybe, as part of a California-based organization, this particular food outlet had been previously seen as a place where change wasn’t going to happen. Karen told me that the employees assembled a Total Health committee, utilized Kaiser Permanente Healthy Picks and other food purchasing standards, chose a new vendor, and here they are.

The title of the post is true, I have never seen a soda fountain where none of the options is more than 35% sugar by weight (one of the products above is 80 calories per 20 ounces).

This is in addition to menu labeling, locally sourced food, elimination of the deep fryer, and better portion sizing.

No one was complaining when we were queuing for our delicious salads, and if you look at the service staff, you can see the engagement in their faces.

Before anyone says, “how could this situation have existed at all in a non-profit leading-edge health system,” I’ll say this is actually a similar story in many organizations. When I visited National Public Radio, recently, I learned about their journey to create a culture of health in their organization. What’s similar about these two situations is the the improvement wasn’t led by physicians, and as I’ve seen, it doesn’t have to be.

Looks appealing! As a celiac, I would still wish for labeling and nutrition information that listed allergens. I saw the sign that directs customers to email the dietitian with questions about allergens, but that’s not always helpful when you’re in line at a cafeteria and need to make real-time decisions about what items to put on your plate.